Dr. Roger Bailey

Dr. Roger Bailey

Assistant Professor

Roger Bailey holds a bachelor’s degree from the College of William & Mary and an M.A. and Ph.D .from the University of Maryland, College Park. He has served as Class of 1957 Postdoctoral Fellow in American Naval Heritage at the U.S. Naval Academy and Copie Hill Civil War Fellow at the American Battlefield Trust.  He teaches courses on naval history and the U.S. military.

His research focuses on how culture and personal identity has affected U.S. military officers—and through them, American foreign relations. His current book project, “The Great Question”: Slavery, Empire, and the U.S. Naval Officer Corps in Antebellum America, examines how naval officers’ attitudes about race, slavery and expansion shaped popular opinion and U.S. foreign policy in the decades before the Civil War.  It received the Coffman Best First Manuscript Prize from the Society for Military History and is under preliminary contract with Cornell University Press. His research has also appeared in The Journal of the Early Republic, Hallowed Ground Magazine, and online in many formats.

Degrees

Ph.D. History (University of Maryland)
M.A. History (University of Maryland)
B.A. History (College of William & Mary)

Research Interests: Military/Naval History, Maritime History, Nineteenth Century America